wild service tree

Photo: Jan-Herm Janßen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 5 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Also called the chequers or checker tree — its fruit gave certain old English pubs the name 'The Chequers' and was historically used to flavor beer and ale before hops became standard. The fruit needs bletting (softening after frost or storage) before it is palatable, much like a medlar. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.

Hardiness

Zone 5–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Tree 10–20 m, occasionally to 25 m

Light

Full sun for fruiting — tolerates shade as a tree, but fruits poorly there

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Woodland

Native range

Temperate Europe, North Africa, and western Asia — from Denmark and the UK (where it is an ancient-woodland indicator species) south through France, mainland Spain and Portugal, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Italy, across the Balkans from Albania to Greece, and into Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and east through Turkey, Crimea, the Caucasus, Cyprus, the Levant and northern Iran.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

Slow to reach maturity — typically 20–50 years to reach its full size of 8–12 m tall with a 4–8 m spread.

Spacing

500 cm (197 in) apart — about 25 m² (269 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Simple, maple-like leaves with 3–4 pairs of unequal, pointed lobes — a shape distinct from the pinnately compound leaves typical of the rest of the genus — turning coppery red to yellow in autumn.

Root system

A heart-root system — a short taproot dividing at the crown into several spreading primary roots — combined with a strong tendency to throw up root suckers at considerable distance from the trunk.

Fruit description

Oval to round green-brown fruit known as 'chequers,' 10–15 mm across with small pale lenticel-like spots, ripening mid-to-late autumn — hard, dry, and astringent when fresh, it must be bletted (softened by frost, or by storing in a cool, dry place until almost but not quite rotten, as with medlars) before eating, at which point it develops a sweet flavor often compared to a date.

Propagation

By seed, which needs about 2 weeks warm followed by 14–16 weeks cold stratification and can be slow to germinate; because it also produces root suckers freely, it can be increased by lifting and replanting rooted suckers, and grafting is used commercially for named selections.

Pollination

Hermaphrodite, insect-pollinated flowers that are only partially self-compatible — fruit set benefits from a second, unrelated wild service tree nearby rather than relying on self-pollination.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.